The past is strange. Remake this classic Marilyn Monroe “expressions sheet” with self-portraits or with the aid of a friend. Bonus points for the involvement of a stranger.
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The past is strange. Remake this classic Marilyn Monroe “expressions sheet” with self-portraits or with the aid of a friend. Bonus points for the involvement of a stranger.
Hogsmeade, Gondor, Cair Paravel, The Emerald City, Never-Never Land… all fantastical places that started as text and have now been interpreted into visual landscapes. Now it’s your turn!
Take a place–a city, a significant geographical formation, ship, maybe even a dimension–and render it visually. You can compile stock images using GIMP or Photoshop (make sure to give credit where it’s due!), draw, paint, or even create a collage. This assignment isn’t limited to places that don’t have a well-known visual representation yet, either; if you want to show us YOUR version of Bag End, go for it!
For your writeup, explain why you chose your imaginary place, the technique you used to create your image, and what effect the transition into a visual medium has on the original description.
Black and white photos are beautiful in their own way, but sometimes I wonder how color would change the feel of a photo. Recolor a black and white photo using Gimp or another photo editing software to show how you imagine the photo looked during the time it was taken or how you think it should look in color.
Inspired by reddit’s “Where did the Soda Go?” board at http://www.reddit.com/r/wheredidthesodago, create a gif of a hilarious infomercial moment that illustrates how ridiculous some infomercials can be.
Ben Rimes regularly takes a day (February 2012 and December 2012) to capture key moments each as an animated GIF – as you go through a day look around and identify places, moments, things that are well represented in the infinite looping form. Assemble at least 5 of them to capture the essences of your day, start to end and publish as a single blog post, with narrative.
What does it mean to see your day in just this form?
Create a simple “Go, Vote” poster reminding people of their civic duty. Feel free to use the Library of Congress website if you’re a U.S. citizen, the Library & Archives of Canada if you’re from “up north” or any other governmental archive of historical imagery.
Edit a childhood photo of yourself to include a more recent photo of you in a pose that makes it look like you were part of the original scene. Pay attention to matching pose, detail, shadows, and color values to match the original. You can go back to your past, at least in your own edited photo!
Based an example of Before and After Pictures with a Twist spotted in Buzzfeed. See also more exquisite examples in Woman Photoshops Present-Day Self into Childhood Photos.
Inspired by the Return to the Scene of the Crime assignment, comes a related idea which asks you to digitally mix the past and the present. This was done exceptionally well by Shawn Clover in his series 1906 + 2010: The Earthquake Blend, “featuring photographs captured during the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake blended into views of what the city currently looks like.”
Use a photograph from the past and digitally blend it with an image of the present. And for five thousand bazillion extra stars, blend the past and present photos with a digital concoction of the future.
Now, I like graffiti as much as the next guy, except when it’s spray painted on my house. But you know what makes it even better? If it moves! Check out Animated Banksy for inspiration (http://madebyabvh.tumblr.com/tagged/Animated-Banksy). Photograph some graffiti or street art, or find a photo if you’re lazy, and make it into an animated GIF. It’s more fun than vandalism!
Let’s face it, ds106 is a difficult ship to sail. Besides the shark-infested copyright waters and the mine filled seas of comment-apathy, it can be hard to keep the ds106 boat going forward all the time. So let’s honor the fact that the site will more than likely continue to endure growing pains, and provide some excellent “technical difficulty” signs/gifs/media that can be displayed the next time the site goes down….wait, it’s working now, right?
